“No lists of things to be done. The day providential to itself. The hour. There is no later. This is later. All things of grace and beauty such that one holds them to one's heart have a common provenance in pain. Their birth in grief and ashes.”
- Cormac McCarthy, The Road

Learn this from the waters:
in mountain clefts and chasms,
loud gush the streamlets,
but great rivers flow silently.
- Sutta Nipata 3.725

The one photo posted is not what I am referring to. Click on the link and look at other photos of the two monks in the set and then try to find photos of, say, Ajahn Munindo or the other monks here http://www.ratanagiri.org.uk/index.php? ... &Itemid=67" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; in such heroic poses. As I said, it just maybe the photographer, who is very good, but then the photog on the Aruna Ratanagiri web-site is also very good.

>> Do you see a man wise[enlightened/ariya]in his own eyes? There is more hope for a fool than for him.<< -- Proverbs 26:12

This being is bound to samsara, kamma is his means for going beyond. -- SN I, 38.

“Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?” HPatDH p.723

Hi Kim
No, I'm not a kiwi. My father-in-law moved to NZ for work fifteen years ago so we have been infrequent visitors.
Kind regards

Ben

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Paihia from Russell

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“No lists of things to be done. The day providential to itself. The hour. There is no later. This is later. All things of grace and beauty such that one holds them to one's heart have a common provenance in pain. Their birth in grief and ashes.”
- Cormac McCarthy, The Road

Learn this from the waters:
in mountain clefts and chasms,
loud gush the streamlets,
but great rivers flow silently.
- Sutta Nipata 3.725

The one photo posted is not what I am referring to. Click on the link and look at other photos of the two monks in the set and then try to find photos of, say, Ajahn Munindo or the other monks here http://www.ratanagiri.org.uk/index.php? ... &Itemid=67" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; in such heroic poses. As I said, it just maybe the photographer, who is very good, but then the photog on the Aruna Ratanagiri web-site is also very good.

Hello, Tilt, yes, I can see why you get that impression "heroic".

I looked at all the photos in the first link, and then compared them to the one you gave.

The difference between the 2 is, from my POV, that the heroic ones are posed, and not candids, while the others are.

In the first images, the monks are standing or sitting still, like statues, before a landscape of 'majestic' beauty.

That gives the images a royal or heroic atmosphere, which lets the monks appear that way as well. It's highly interesting from an artistic point of view!

(If you have an eye for atmosphere, you can always photograph anything in the way you wish, simply through the setting, creating synchronicity between object and surrounding.)

To me, the monks seem simply still and calm, (which is majesty in itself, isn't it?), on one photo a robe is flapping in the wind, but the aquiline profile is adding to a majestic impression.

The candids of the link you gave of course seem less 'heroic', because that is the inevitable effect of candids. The monks are m not posing for the camera, but caught sitting, in attitudes of service, kneeling, bowing, etc.

If I remember that correctly, somewhere here in Germany they have to go by car for a while too, to get to a city and then go on alms round.
They would perhaps get out of the car here too, and be photographed in a scenic landscape, and later on candids in a street and restaurant as well, as it was done here.

Perhaps it's a form of respect and veneration, to combine the magnificence of the dhamma with a magnificent nature?

Because I've been there a number of times, and it's in the "middle of nowhere". Hardly anyone lives at Milford sound. However, lots of tourists come though on buses each day. It would be more convincing to see him standing at the jetty to see if any of those tourists would put anything in his bowl... Of course, a monk might get arrested for breaking some law on begging or soliciting if he did that...

Anyway, I take the captions as light-hearted fun, not anything to do with reality. Certainly he's a real Ajah-Chah-group monk and he gets lay support up an Vimutti...

Ajahn must have had quite the stash of good kamma to get a sunny day in Fiordland for the photo op.

"For a disciple who has conviction in the Teacher's message & lives to penetrate it, what accords with the Dhamma is this:
'The Blessed One is the Teacher, I am a disciple. He is the one who knows, not I." - MN. 70 Kitagiri Sutta